Fade to Black
by Bogwitch
Summary: Spike. Drusilla. Eighties goth club.


It's never been cooler to be dead.

London is a decade different from the last time they were here, but Spike doesn't think they'll stay very long. The heady sense of revolution tangible on their last visit has faded and something darker has settled in. Punk is dead, dumped into history's dustbin along with the four-day week. The sharp energy of the Roxy dissipated under the imminent threat of mutually assured destruction and twisted into noir Gothic. With it goes his only reason for coming back. Britain's anarchistic anger has sold out to day glo, nullified by nihilism, inertia and a smothering hedonistic glitz that waits for the bomb to obliterate it all.

The new London Goth clubs turn their back on the fizz and the decadence, celebrating the gathering gloom and the blood, creating a nocturne world of black against pale faces; black hair, black clothes, black make up. No variation to the monochrome. No one here looks to the future anymore, choosing instead to in a mirage: a romantic gothic past that never really was.

But Drusilla seems to like the Goth clubs anyway. Fickle as always, London was her choice. Feeling a tug of nostalgia for home he didn't share, she'd turned her back on the dazzle of the New York Disco she once loved so much, bringing them back across the ocean on a sudden tangent, knowing that, however he felt, he would always indulge her.

So in the centre of the shrouded dance floor, Drusilla shimmies and shakes; he might join her later after they've eaten but he's feeling too peckish to dance. He leans back against the bar instead, watches the world like he owns it and the trap is set. He doesn't even have to try, these girls like the mystery, the aloofness, the aura of danger; and one falls into his trap before he's even ordered his beer.

The girl, reeled in with a brief look and a cool detachment, comes over to try her luck. "Got a light?" she asks, producing a cigarette from her dainty black lace bag.

He gives the crowd one last scan, as if he hasn't already found what he needs, making sure no one is watching, but they're too busy pretending to be dead to notice the real thing walking amongst them. When he turns to the girl, he appraises her with a quick sweep up and down. He's nothing but blatant but it always works. This one is encased in a cocoon of studs and buckles, bondage and lace; she's painted pale as if freshly risen from her premature burial, with a circle of kohl stark around her dilated eyes, as if the thick cosmetics can really hide the warm life that radiates from her. Teased and sculpted under a cloud of Firm Hold hairspray, her big black hair frames her death mask face with dark tongues. Another Siouxsie clone like all the rest; she's nothing special and she's not even the first he's had this week, but right now she's just what he's looking for.

He smirks, reaching into the pocket of his long coat for his lighter. When he flicks her a flame she leans right into the light with her cigarette. She smells of patchouli, dry cemetery leaves and rich pumping blood.

As she breathes out her first lungful of smoke, her eyes study his hands, from the chipped nail varnish to his scuffed knuckles. Perhaps she's wondering if he plays guitar, or maybe thinking that the dark blood beneath his nails is meant to be some sort of grave dirt.

When she straightens again she takes another thoughtful drag and tries to seem wise. "Are you with the band?" she finally asks.

That makes him chuckle. They all think they're so different, but they're always the same. "Not likely."

She absorbs that, watching very intently as he lights his own cigarette, sucking in with his scimitar cheekbones. There's a humour and not a little lust in the way her mouth twists as she exhales, but her eyes are empty and vague.

"I'm Christine," she whispers into his ear as if he cares. They've just met, but she presses close, wanting him and trusting him too much.

He accepts the invite and takes a liberty, slipping a hand into her top. Brushing aside a cascade of junk jewellery for access, he grabs a handful of ripe peachy tit. She's young and soft and chemically vacant and she barely blinks as he gropes her, letting him feel all he wants. When he rolls a nipple under his thumb until it hardens it's her only response.

For a moment he thinks about shagging the girl – grabbing Dru and bringing Christine back to their bed to share. But he's not in the mood; he's bored and hungry; right now more up for a fight than a fuck. He won't get that here.

The song segues into another. The gut jab of three-cord spite turns to a shimmering carousel of guitars and banshee vocals. Christine gives him a vacant smile and guides him out to a dance floor that's a twirling mass of swaying bodies and shifting mists, spotlights and air that tastes of dry ice and cigarette smoke, tombstones and dry attic rooms.

Christine rocks idly to the rhapsody curling around them, her movements sinuous and fluid and carnal, but Spike only has eyes for another, who slips out of the darkness like she's at one with it, dancing around them both like a dervish, arms raised high above her head as she twirls, lost in the music, but keeping to a rhythm that's all in her head.

Glitter dances in Drusilla's eyes as she catches his captivated gaze. Time for dinner then.

Spike takes Christine's hands and pulls her close, bending to kiss her dark painted lips, makes her melt as he lingers there before giving Drusilla her turn. Black belladonna lips meet cherry red, ice meeting fire above him as he mouths the girl's white swan neck. Her skin tastes sweetly of the life roaring through her: pure and elusive yet forever addictive. He can't get enough.

She gasps, breathy, as two mouths nip at her pulse points. She's surrendered; she's theirs to do what they want to, and they will. Yet her submission makes this too easy and he's bored already. His bones crunch and his eyes turn to sickly yellow as a delicate hand tipped with sharp red nails smothers a wide-eyed scream. Skin tears like paper beneath his fangs. Blood pours like warm burgundy into his open mouth, its heat surging along his dead veins like a spring tide. For a moment all too fleeting, he feels alive again, warm and vital, like he could face the sun once more, but the rush, as always, doesn't last. He's full, but not satisfied. He needs more.

He'll always need more borrowed life to devour.

As Drusilla drinks her fill Christine jerks, slumping back into her killer's embrace as she starts to die, trading her lifeblood for the cold grip of eternal sleep. Her mouth, slightly open for shallow, rasping gasps, invites him to steal away her final desperate breaths. Dipping to kiss her cooling lips once more, he hungrily takes what's been offered, consuming that last delicious whisper of life as it ebbs away with the last beat of her heart.

Finally, as the girl's eyes flutter and close for the last time, Drusilla lifts her head from the ravaged throat. A smudge of blood lingers on her lips for an instant before she swipes them clean with a blushed pink tongue.

Spellbound, Spike tosses lifeless carcass aside and draws his beloved into his arms; Christine is already nothing more than a tasty meal soon to be forgotten. Even the crowd, who edge their way around the girl crumpled into the discarded cigarette butts and stagnant pools of spilled beer, barely regard her as more than another casualty of the club scene, dead to the world from too much snakebite or something harder.

Drusilla smiles as Spike holds her tight, her eyes sparkling with well-fed pleasure. "Mmmm," she purrs, reading his mind. "Let's get another."

end


End file.
